The Runaway Asteroid Part 5

"What-?" exclaimed Vly, turning.

"What was that?" cried Joe. "Something jumped across the corridor. I think it went into this recess here." He pointed to an opening between a few stacked boxes.

"One of my koalangs," answered Montezuma. "I've got four of them here.

There are a few more in the living quarters. Good company. They can startle you, though, and they can make an awful mess. More than once I've threatened to make stew out of 'em and eat 'em for dinner." The Starmen looked at one another, wondering if he was joking. His next action showed that he was.

"Come on, Howard," said Montezuma gently, bending over and calling into the dark place where the koalang had hidden. "They won't hurt you. I know you're not used to company, but no one's gonna hurt you. Come on out. That's it, come on." He reached in gently and drew a small creature out of the darkness. It had a small furry face with large, frightened eyes, and snuggled up against the miner. Its fur was caramel and white. He folded it into his chest and covered it gently with both hands. He crooned to it lovingly for a moment or two, then said, "That's right. You're okay. Go play." Then he added with mock fierceness, "Just stay out of the paint!" He set it down and turned back to the door at the end of the corridor.

"In here," he directed, leading the way into the room beyond.

4: Sabbath George

THE ROOM was smaller than the Starmen had antic.i.p.ated. Its small size was accentuated by being packed to the ceiling with a variety of items.

Hand tools identical to those used by rock hounds for centuries lay on tables and on shelves. Stacks of paper, most of which showed signs of being bound by hand, covered much of the remaining s.p.a.ce. On one shelf was a large, clear sphere on an ornately shaped stand. The eyes of all three Starmen were drawn to it.

"Have a seat," offered their host.

There were three chairs. Montezuma sat in one placed before a desk and swiveled to face his visitors. Zip and Joe took the other chairs and Mark sat on a short stack of crates filled with rock samples. A thick book rested on a table in the center of the room. Mark glanced at the t.i.tle, turning his head slightly to do so. It was The Flying Carpet, by Richard Halliburton. There was a bookmark about halfway through the book.

The asteroid miner leaned forward. "What about George?" he asked.

Zip filled him in. Montezuma Vly paid close attention. His eyes never wavered from Zip's face as he spoke. When Zip was finished, Vly nodded.

"Mm hmm," he murmured. "This could be bad for George. I'll tell you where to find him. I expect that you'll be able to keep him out of the clutches of the s.p.a.ce vultures. You've got an enemy to be reckoned with in this Zimbardo psychopath, but I believe you can handle him."

"You seem to know a lot about our recent exploits, Mr. Vly," said Joe, conversationally.

"I'm not the complete recluse people think, Mr. Taylor. People have a lot of wrong ideas about me. I don't want to be listed in the Register of Peoples, and I don't want people b.u.t.ting into my business or telling me how to live, but I keep up with the news. If I hadn't recognized you, you wouldn't have been allowed to land on my asteroid. You're not wearing Starman's red, you know."

"We're grateful to you, Mr. Vly," nodded Zip.

"May I ask-" began Mark, then hesitated.

"Yes, you may ask. Go on."

Mark turned his head toward the sphere. "The sphere..."

"Oh yes. It's pure crystal, all right."

The Starmen gasped. "Pure...crystal...?" stammered Mark. "Why, there can't be a larger one in the Solar System! It's priceless!"

"Next largest was in the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, a little more than twelve inches in diameter. This one's sixteen and three-quarters inches. Found it myself on Adamant-that's the parent asteroid from which this sliver I live on was busted off a few millennia ago." Mark knew he was referring to what he had called a "worthless chunk" before they landed.

Vly went on. "Shaped it myself in those old machines you saw coming in here. Had to redesign some of 'em to fit a crystal this size, but we did it."

"It looks flawless!" breathed Joe.

"Looks it, but isn't. Its flaws are its greatest treasure. Watch this; you haven't seen anything yet." Vly picked up a small cutting tool with a laser guide at the end. He turned off the lights and then pointed the laser at the crystal sphere. The beam struck the surface and then scattered throughout the interior of the globe, igniting sparks of spectacular glory. Mark could feel tears come into his eyes from the unearthly beauty the light created. Many dozens of flakes, invisible to the naked eye, were revealed when the laser beam pierced the near-perfect sphere. They exploded in glorious colors-gold, orange, deep red, flaming yellow, silver; even a few brilliant green, deep blue, and violet sparks traced across the inner world.

The Starmen were speechless. They couldn't take their eyes off the resplendent glory of the sphere under the laser light. "Beautiful, isn't it?" asked Vly, gently. There was no need to answer.

"Where do the colors come from?" asked Mark. "Laser light has only one wavelength, so it can't be refracting in there."

"The crystal's impurities are almost invisible to the unaided eye,"

answered Vly, "but the laser hits the impurities and causes secondary emissions of light of all sorts of color-the more impurities, the more colors. It lights up better than a fire opal."

As he moved the laser beam slowly around the globe, the interior lights changed-first one, then another "flaw" taking the light and surging into radiance.

All too soon, he switched off the laser and turned the room lights back on. It was almost as if a spell had been broken.

"C'mon," he said. "I'll show you just where George is on the chart." He moved back down the hall, the Starmen following. When they were back in the room they had first entered, Vly reached up into a recess where there were several rolled sheets of paper. "Move aside," he said quietly, pushing a reluctant koalang over and pulling out a large roll.

He unrolled it over a rock polisher and gestured for the Starmen to take the corners. It was a map of a portion of the asteroid belt.

"Here's where we are," said Vly, pointing to a spot on the map, "and here's where George is." His finger swept across the map to where a tiny dot had been placed. "It's a mining operation of moderate size called Z25. He runs it there with a fair-sized crew-maybe a dozen men."

There were equations, sketches, and notes scribbled all over the sheet.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Vly," said Mark, "but I don't follow you. I'm used to plotting coordinates and thinking in three dimensions."

"See these figures?" asked Vly. "They're your coordinates. It is a three-dimensional map, in a manner of speaking. If it weren't, I couldn't get around. I'll write down what you need. But you'll find George on that little plunk of a rock. He's been there several months now and won't be hard to find, once I point it out to you. I just spoke to him a few hours ago and I'll get ahold of him again and tell him you'll be coming." He began to write some notes down for Mark.

"Must take a lot of power to run your operation here, Mr. Vly,"

observed Mark while he waited for Montezuma to finish writing. "Don't you have to conserve energy?"

"Haven't had to conserve energy since I developed a new process for drawing energy directly from the sun."

"But out here the solar radiation is so weak. You can't get much energy from solar panels, no matter how efficient-certainly not enough to run your machines without some sort of supplement."

"I don't use solar panels any more, Mr. Seaton. I mine energy from the sun directly with an entirely new process. I can pull in and store about four gigawatts. Gives me all I need and plenty left over."

"Four gigawatts?"

"Four gigawatts. That's a four with nine zeroes after it."

Mark almost shouted. "I know how much it is! Mr. Vly! You amaze me!

There's nothing like that anywhere else in the Solar System! n.o.body has anything like that, n.o.body! Not even Starlight Enterprise! You could make a fortune if you sell your design!!"

"Really?" said Mr. Vly, lifting his eyebrows slightly, handing him the sheet with his notes on it. "Excuse me a moment while I write that down, so the next time I want to turn my whole life over to lawyers and businessmen I'll know just what to do."

"But, but..." Mark spluttered. Joe laughed and Zip smiled.

"Thank you, Mr. Vly," said Zip, extending his hand. "It has been a remarkable visit, and we appreciate very much your letting us drop in."

Montezuma shook Zip's hand. "Wait a minute, Starmen. Let me give you something to help you while away the long hours in s.p.a.ce." He turned and rummaged through a box, then scanned a shelf behind him. After a moment he pulled out a gold disc in a flat, clear container.

"Take this," he said, handing it to Zip. "It's a recording of the entire works of Johann Sebastian Bach. That's more than 1,200 compositions. The music is so complex that some of its mysteries weren't even discovered until the computer age. Lily made this disk.

She's an expert in the music of the Renaissance. Does research all the time."